


the drifting roads

by Niki



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Assassin with a Heart, Found Families, Friendship, Introspection, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 12:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4263780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niki/pseuds/Niki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's not saying it's better than what he had, but he's happy to live with it—and for the first time in ages he hopes he can go on doing that for a long time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Origins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alliterate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alliterate/gifts).



> Thank you for making me look at Zevran in a way I never have before! I hope you enjoy what I found as much as I did. I did not know where he would take me or who he would go there with, but I tried to stay with your preferences! I hope you don't mind Zevran/Isabela/Fenris, because that's the combination they wanted to end up in. Still, this ended up being less about them than I thought, romance taking the back seat to family, and... And I feel bad for just mentioning many things I could have made stories out of, so sorry for teasing you with those possibilities, I guess? 
> 
> Tl;dr: I let the story and Zevran take me where he wanted, and that wasn't the place and the feelings I expected. (I expected sex, honestly.)
> 
> (Beta by N.)

Zevran only had two reasons to be close to people: if he slept with them, or if he killed them. The two weren't always exclusive. (There had been a third reason but he didn't think about that. If he spoke about it, it was only in the context of those two reasons.)

The Grey Warden was supposed to be in the second category. Had he really thought he could kill her? At least he had been sure he would die if he lost, but now... 

Now, there was a third category again, or maybe a fourth, because she showed no signs of succumbing to his charms, willing as she was to flirt with him. But she seemed to want him around, anyway. Came back to talk to him, and not just to hear his amusing stories but to get his opinion on things and that, that wasn't at all what he had expected when he took the job. 

That wasn't what he had _wanted_ when he took the job, because dammit but the woman had managed to make him talk about Rinna and his past and actually cared about his opinions and feelings and he found himself caring about _her_ opinions and feelings, and not only as tools to manipulate her. 

When she gave him the Dalish leather gloves he was confused until the smell of them took him back home, and the feeling wasn't unpleasant. He suddenly wished he had something of Rinna's, to remember her scent by. She had smelled like sweat and leather, never of the perfumes and scents he himself sometimes used to blend in with the idle rich. The only time they clung to her skin was when it had been in contact with his and that... that wasn't a memory he was willing to visit.

But the thought was followed by another, an idle question on which scent he would remember his Warden by. He had never felt as close to someone without sleeping with them, or wanting to sleep with them, and it's not like he'd ever say 'no' if she suggested sex but suddenly, suddenly he found he didn't need that, wasn't actively trying to get her in the sack anymore, and that had less to do with the looks she exchanged with her warden companion and more to do with the fact that Zevran finally felt he understood what that 'friendship' lark was about.

Besides, there were plenty of other fish in the camp. Morrigan may parade her body around like the whores in his childhood home but she was one mess of issues he was not touching. Leliana was fun to flirt with, as was Wynne, but neither one would ever take him seriously, and that was fine because that meant he could put all his effort into making any headway with their taciturn qunari. 

Sten, the broody and dramatic, who hid his softer side in plain sight by denying its very existence. He would be a wild ride, but alas, it seemed one he was forced to forego taking. 

Thank the Maker for Isabela showing up in Denerim, or he'd have despaired over his sudden dry spell. Isabela, at least, was always ready for a light-hearted romp in the bedroom (or a beach, or a cabin, or a forest, or a dark alley), enjoying herself unabashedly, giving as well as she was getting. Maybe, in another life, he would have jumped into the ship with her and been content as a pirate. 

Not much use for a poisoner on a pirate ship, though. 

And besides, he'd sworn himself to the Warden's aid and... yeah, all right, he wasn't about to abandon his friend to this mad quest alone, without the pleasure of the company of a particularly handsome elf, or a swift blade. 

He even helped her kill Taliesin, and that was harder than it had any right to be. Taliesin had been there even before Rinna, and then he had been the only thing left of her and... and it was over, and he was not the type to cry over little spilled blood, even if 'entrails' wasn't the smell he had wanted to take with him as a memory of the person who had been as close to him as his own hand once. No, more like... they had both been hands of a single entity, and then they had been crippled without their brain. And now he was alone.

Except he wasn't, he was a part of a group, close in a way he had never experienced before. Sure everyone had their own goals and motivations, but they weren't exploiting each other to get to those goals and it was staggering. 

Even Morrigan, who so obviously had an ulterior motive to be there, was forming what looked like an actual friendship with the damn Warden who had a disturbing habit of worming her way into your innards and making a home there and that was a really, really disturbing metaphor that had gotten out of hand, and the sooner he dropped it the better. 

Too bad Sten wasn't getting any warmer. Even if he had been closest to giddy he'd probably ever get when he got his sword back, and there were metaphors he could work with in that sentence. Even if his was more of a dagger compared to a qunari, but he knew how to use it and damn well. He hadn't been raised in a brothel for nothing.

But he could even live with Sten never giving him the time of day. He would hate leaving this time period, this group, regardless of the strife and the guts and the damn darkspawn, but the sense of, of... unity, of companionship was something he'd miss, even if it sometimes chafed him to be surrounded by so many people in the field. 

Maybe, after this was over, he'd entice a few of them to come with him when he made his way back home and got rid of the few loose ends he'd left behind him? 

Taliesin had been a loose end, a part of him that had proven to be unessential, after all. But there were others left, others he wouldn't gift with a fast death in a battle. There were the mouths and brains and tongues that had made them kill Rinna, that had decided to destroy what had been the best thing in his life, as a test of some sort, for their own ends, and the loss of their best damn assassins weren't enough punishment. 

There were Crows flying on borrowed time, whether they knew it or not, and he would gladly pick their wings off. 

Maybe Leliana would be interested in his version of the Game?


	2. Kirkwall

It just bloody figured that Zevran would get mixed up with another damn woman engaged in trying to save the damn world. At least this one had as many interesting people in her little group of people, whom she seemed to be ensnaring into a family of some sort, just as the Hero of Ferelden – as his Warden was now called in all the lands of Thedas – had done during the Blight.

It amused him no end to see Isabela among them, pulled into the companionship kicking and screaming, made to care about things other than herself, her ship, her own goals. At least she was still ready and willing for a quick romp on the beach, because Zevran had been too busy with his loose ends to indulge much unless in the line of duty.

“Who's the pretty glowy elf?” he asked as they were getting dressed and trying to clean sand from places sand had no right to be.

“Fenris? More issues than I could fit on a frigate but wrapped in such a pretty package I don't think I'd even mind.”

“Tag team?”

Isabela threw her head back and let out a joyous laugh, and Zevran thought he could probably leave a few hours later, to get in another round with her.

“I'm game if you are.”

“Deal.”

Maybe even a few days later...


	3. Skyhold

Zevran didn't know if the fates were screwing with him or the entire world, but here he was again, entangled in the affairs of yet another woman tasked with saving everything. 

And just as he'd found himself making his way back to Kirkwall all that time later, to aid the Champion in her desperate final battle in the Circle, he couldn't let this insanity well enough alone this time either. A few ravens exchanged with Leliana, a few diverted soldiers as distraction, and suddenly he felt like there was a debt that required a more... personal touch, in repayment.

And at least he got to see Morrigan again! Her taste in clothes was as impractical as ever but a son seemed to have changed her in ways he had not expected. A son with very familiar features, but he was not going there, not even close. 

Leliana was grimmer too, no tales by the fire side for her anymore, no whispered confidences and giggles with the Inquisitor as there had been with the Warden. 

Guess that was what responsibility did for you. Being in charge of people. That was why Zevran had never amassed followers, even if he and Isabela and Fenris had had their adventures. But he was not responsible for them, not like that. He didn't give orders. (Except in bed, and that only if Isabela was in the mood – she liked being in charge too much.) (And Zevran didn't mind that at all.) (Oh no.)

It wasn't that difficult to make his way to Skyhold in secret, seeing as recruits and be believers flocked into the mountains daily and the fact that Leliana almost, _almost_ started when seeing him in her rookery was a coup that felt almost as good as sticking it into yet another Crow, even if seeing her felt like something else entirely. 

The feeling was weird, reminiscent of what he'd felt a decade ago while travelling with her when the Hero of Ferelden was just “the Warden.” It was like... like sitting down by a fire at the end of a day, trusting that everyone else there was as committed to keeping you safe as you were committed to keeping them safe. 

It was like what he imagined “coming home” would feel like, but not really tied to a place. It was... it was... was it like having a family? A person you cared about, knew well, could count on, but _didn't_ want to sleep with? 

Would Sister Nightingale laugh herself to death if she learnt Zevran considered her an actual sister? He didn't tell her, naturally, but something in the way her face relaxed when she recognised him let him believe she might actually understand what he was feeling. 

They shared a bottle or few of something liberated from the Keep's wine cellar, and just the fact Leliana let herself drink so much with him proved that he had been right, at least on some level. The trust had to be mutual, so maybe the relief was as well? 

They traded stories of all their mutual acquai... friends. Friends, family, the people they had in common. They speculated on what their Warden was doing, where she was travelling and with whom – Leliana was keeping track of sightings and rumours of her, as best as she could.

They toasted Sten and his new career, they toasted Alistair and his, Wynne, and everyone else from the old days. Leliana asked after Isabela and Fenris, by name, and the shadow of her old impishness in her eyes. It was... it was. It was good. It was the safest he'd felt in weeks, the most comfortable he had been in ages, and but for the times he shared with Isabela and Fenris, something he hadn't felt in over a decade, not since their shared camping sites of the fifth Blight. 

So Zevran decided to stick around, if only for a while, to see if there was something else he could do to help the Inquisition, or their Inquisitor – or their spymaster. 

It didn't take him long to ferret out the secrets of the keep – where the Inquisitor spent her nights, who made the Ambassador giggle like a school girl behind a corner of the training yard, and where her handsome lieutenant's boss spent his. He found all that quite adorable. 

Still, he felt curiously empty after a few days in one place but didn't think it was the being in one place thing this time. It was the bonds he could see all around him, their little flirtations and deep passions, their friendships and trust. Leliana alone wasn't enough to cancel the lack of his own people where he could see them, touch them, know they were safe. 

He _missed_ his buxom pirate with a huge hat and the broody elf with the glowy tattoos more than he ever would have expected, probably more than he ever should have let himself. But he had people who were _his_ again, and it wasn't like it had been, and he would never say it was better but...

But he could live with it, and for the first time in ages, he wished to keep doing it for a long, long time. 

As soon as they saved the world again.

 

\---the End


End file.
